they are worried more about primaries than general elections. the best case scenario here is that the senate does craft a compromise that both parties can live with, and it is take it or leave it to the house right up until the deadline, and you figure enough democrats and republicans come together to send it across to the white house. >> stephen dennis, thank you so much for your time. >> absolutely. >> here are president obama's remarks from the white house earlier today. afterwards, we will hear from senators reid and mcconnell from the senate floor. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> good afternoon, everybody. for the past couple of months, i have been working with leaders of both parties to try to forge an agreement that would grow our economy and shrink the deficit, a balanced plan that would cut spending in a responsible way but also ask wealthy americans to pay more and protect our middle-class and everyone striving to get into the middle class. i want to ge